Russia Accuses US Of Carving Out "Alternative Government" In Syria As Mattis Says No Longer Focusing On Terrorism

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has accused the United States of working to carve out "an alternative government" on Syrian soil in statements made at a UN press briefing related to the recent Turkish military build-up poised to assault Syrian Kurdish areas of Northern Syria. Lavrov's words come after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson pledged in a speech on Wednesday that US military forces would remain in Syria indefinitely until various objectives are met, which include Syrian government transition and the curtailing of Iran's influence.

Lavrov said "It’s a fact that US forces are seriously involved in creating alternative government bodies on vast part of the Syrian territory. And this, of course, absolutely contradicts their own obligations, which they committed to on numerous occasions, including at the UN Security Council, on maintaining the sovereignty and the territorial integrity on Syria."

Image via Anadolou News Agency

The Russian FM further accused the US of contradicting its previous claim that US troops - which number at least 2,000 according to recent Pentagon statements - were only in Syria to fight the Islamic State and not wage a proxy war against the Syrian government and its allies.

The prior US policy of regime change in Syria, which began under the Obama administration and intensified under a CIA program, was something many analysts perceived that President Trump had abandoned - consistent with earlier campaign promises. In the summer of last year Trump shut down the CIA program - widely reported to be the agency's largest covert program - even while boosting support for the Pentagon program to arm and train the predominately Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

"Rex Tillerson told me many times that the only reason for their presence there [in Syria] is defeating Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISL). Now they have some much more long-standing plans," Lavrov said further of the inconsistency in US policy. "We will have to take this into account and look for solutions that won’t allow the destruction of Syrian sovereignty."

At the start of this week the Pentagon rolled out with deeply controversial plans for the US coalition in Syria to establish a 30,000-strong new border security force primarily utilizing the SDF, which many analysts see ultimately as a US commitment to the partitioning of Syria along ethnic and sectarian lines. And Russia has now issued a formal complaint alleging as much.

Meanwhile US Defense Secretary James Mattis unveiled a bit of a foreign policy 180 when in a speech on Friday he said that US national security focus was no longer terrorism, but "competition between great powers." He said the US faced "growing threats from revisionist powers as different as China and Russia," while unveiling a new national defense strategy.